When is BAS Due?
BAS must be lodged and paid by 28th October 2015. The good news is that if you use a Tax Agent such as Nixer, you have until 28th November to lodge and pay.
What Income Do I Report?
The ATO required Uber drivers to be registered for GST as at 1st August 2015. That means your BAS this quarter needs to report all income and expenses between 1st August and 30th September 2015.
Upload Receipts
You don’t have to upload receipts to lodge your BAS. This is optional.
We have included this feature so you have a safe place to store all your documents and an easy place to find them if the ATO wants to check your records. This also helps our accountants verify you are making the correct claims.
Income
This is very straight forward. Add up all your income you have earned between 1st August 2015 and 30th September 2015. This is the total amount of income for each trip, before Uber takes their 20% fee.
Business Use % – Car Expenses
The business use % for your car expenses should all be the same amount. So if you are claiming 80% of your petrol as a business expense, you should be claiming 80% of any other car related expenses also (things like car insurance & car maintenance.
To work out your business use % for car expenses, you need to keep a logbook. Read our post here about how to keep a log book.
If you have not finished a log book yet, you can estimate the business use % for this BAS. You will then need to continue keeping the logbook until you finish the 12 week period. You can then adjust your BAS at the end of the year if the business use % is different to what you estimated.
Business Use % – Related Expenses
The business use % for related expenses does not need to come from a logbook. You will need to make a reasonable estimate.
For example, you could estimate how many hours you drive for Uber each week. In this example, lets say 30 hours. Then you would estimate how many other hours you use your mobile phone. Let’s say it was 10 hours. This is a total of 40 hours use.
To find the business use %, divide the amount of hours your phone is used for business (30hrs) by the total amount of hours (40hrs).
30/40 = 0.75.
Business use % = 75%.
Just remember, for all related expenses you need to be able to justify why you are claiming the expense as a business expenses. You also need to justify how you calculated the business use %.
Can I claim GST on Water I Purchased?
Bottles of water are GST free. That means you have not paid any GST when you purchased the water. Therefore you cannot claim the GST back on your BAS form.
At the end of the financial year you can claim back the water purchases as tax deduction. You cannot claim it during the year on BAS lodgements.
Petrol:
Add up all the petrol you purchased between 1st August and 30th September 2015. You need records of all your purchases, either receipts or bank statements are okay as proof. This is the total amount you have paid, including GST.
Car Insurance
Add up all the costs of your car insurance premiums for the quarter. A portion of the car insurance includes stamp duty which does not have GST. Therefore, you cannot claim back all the GST on your car insurance premium.
We calculate this for you when we lodge your BAS. So just enter the total amount you paid for the quarter and let us do the rest.
Purchases over $1,000 (Capital Purchases)
The ATO requires you to separate any expenses you are claiming that are over $1,000. These are called Capital Expenses. An example of a capital purchase you can claim could be a new car or a new iphone (over $1,000).
Remember you must have purchased it during the last quarter.
